PagerDuty sends notifications to on-call users when an incident is assigned to them. These notifications are most commonly sent when an incident triggers or escalates. Depending on your account’s features, users may also receive notifications when they’re added as a responder or subscriber, or when a conference bridge is added to an incident.

PagerDuty can send notifications via the following channels:

• Email Notifications
• SMS Notifications
• Phone Notifications
• Push Notifications

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Configure Contact Methods and Notification Rules

This article details the content that is included in various PagerDuty notifications. For more information about adding contact methods and configuring notification rules, please see the following sections in the User Profile article:

• Contact Information
• Notification Rules

Email Notifications

Source: PagerDuty sends email notifications from [email protected].

Rich-Text/HTML Email Notifications

Users can administer whether they’d like to receive rich-text or HTML notifications on their user profile in the web app:

1. Go to User Icon My Profile Contact Information tab.
2. In the section Email, click next to your desired email address or Add Email Address, depending on whether you’d like to edit an existing email or add a new one.
3. Make a selection in the checkbox next to Send HTML Emails.
   • If this option is unselected, PagerDuty will send email notifications in basic text.

4. Click Save.

Here is an example of a PagerDuty HTML email notification:

Here is an example of a PagerDuty text-only email notification:

When you receive a PagerDuty email notification, the incident’s Details section will be truncated after 500 characters. You can include clickable links in this truncated message. The rest of the email body is accessible either in the web app, on the incident’s details page, or in the mobile app.

PagerDuty removes attachments from email notifications and incident logs. To view the original attachment, please refer to the system that sent the original attachment.

SMS Notifications

Source: PagerDuty sends SMS notifications from a predefined list of phone numbers.

PagerDuty SMS notifications are truncated to meet the 160-character limit for text messages.

Here is an example of a PagerDuty SMS notification:

If multiple incidents are assigned to you, then PagerDuty will bundle all notifications into one SMS notification, listing out the incident numbers and giving you the option to acknowledge all or resolve all incidents at once.

Phone Notifications

Source: Variable numbers from the PagerDuty Vcard.

Please read our Live Call Routing article for more information on how Live Call Routing messages may be formatted.

Push Notifications

Here is an example of a PagerDuty push notification:

Notification Bundling

When a user is assigned to multiple incidents, PagerDuty will bundle notifications into a single summary message in an effort to reduce alert fatigue and distractions. All notification methods (email, SMS, phone and push) support notification bundling. Bundled notifications will include information about all triggered incidents (i.e., not acknowledged or resolved).

The following examples assume a service named “Nagios-Shopping-Cart” has triggered five incidents within the previous minute. Here is what bundled notifications would look like for each notification method:

Email

You are assigned 5 triggered incidents in PagerDuty:
Please visit the following URL to manage these incidents.
https://fake-name.pagerduty.com/dashboard

1) Incident #100
   Opened on: Jan 1 at 12:00pm PST
   Service: Nagios-Shopping-Cart
   Description: Emergency in the server room
   Link: https://fake-service.pagerduty.com/i/100

SMS

ALRT: #100,#101,#102,#103,#104 on Nagios-Shopping-Cart. Reply 14:Ack all, 16:Resolv all

Phone

You have 5 triggered incidents on Nagios-Shopping-Cart. Press 4 to acknowledge all incidents. Press 6 to resolve all incidents. Press 0 for help or press * to repeat this message.

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Minimize Notifications

You can reduce the overall number of notifications that you receive by adding a delay to your notification rules. For example, adding a few-minutes delay will allow more time for incidents to aggregate, and you can expect to receive fewer notifications during periods of high incident volume.

Respond to Incident Notifications

Respond to an SMS Notification

When you receive an SMS incident notification, you will be prompted to Ack, Resolv, or Escal8 it. While the specific code you receive for each action may vary, Ack will always end in 4, Resolv will always end in 6, and Escal8 will always end in 8.

The following example assumes there is an incident on a service named “Signal Sciences”:

Respond to a Phone Notification

Similar to SMS notifications, you can respond to phone notifications to acknowledge, resolve or escalate an incident.

An example phone notification states: PagerDuty Alert: You have one triggered incident on Signal Sciences. The failure is “Check outside normal range - Warning”. Press 4 to acknowledge. Press 6 to resolve. Press 8 to escalate to the level 2 on call, User 2 .

Enter the appropriate number on your phone’s keypad to take one of the following actions:

• Acknowledge
• Resolve
• Escalate
  • This option is available if there is another level in the service’s escalation policy.

Respond from the Mobile App

For more information about taking action on incidents in the mobile app, please see Respond to Incidents in the Mobile App.

Respond to an Email Notification

Responding to an email notification to acknowledge or resolve an incident is not supported. We recommend using one of the following methods to take action on an incident:

• Web app (acknowledge, resolve)
• Mobile app
• SMS notification
• Phone notification